Police aggression against three San Sebastián Bachajón ejido members denounced

San Sebastián Bachajón ejido owners denounced that in the early hours of Tuesday, three of their compañeros were detained, and disappeared for several hours, after Chilón municipal police, the municipality to which the ejido belongs, attacked them with firearms. They fear that it is revenge for the incarceration of an agent of said police, accused of murdering Juan Carlos Gómez Silvano last March.

Currently, the three are in the custody of the Public Ministry (MP, its in itials in Spanish) of the State’s Attorney General of Justice (PGJE) in Ocosingo. The detainees’ defense told La Jornada that they are considered “probably responsible for the aggravated injury of the Chilón municipal police.” As of this afternoon, the family members and compañeros of the Sixth from San Sebastián Bachajón stayed at the Public Ministry in Ocosingo “waiting to gain access to the detainees.”

The ejido owners filed for a protective order: “because of illegal arrest, being held incommunicado, torture and forced disappearance, pointing to various federal authorities as well as local Chiapas authorities, since the family was several hours (up to 18 hours on the 16th) without knowing about them.” The MP of Ocosingo was already notified of the protective order.

At one o’clock in the morning on the 16th, Juan Antonio Gómez Silvano, Mario Aguilar Silvano and Roberto Gómez Hernández, from Virgen de Dolores community, were attacked “and taken away in an unknown direction, when they were walking in the direction of their community coming from Chilón, the municipal capital,” the Indigenous adherents of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle denounced,.

Another two of their compañeros were able to escape from the aggression of the municipal police and reach the community to report the acts. The Tzeltal ejido owners denounced that their whereabouts were unknown for the entire day. “They searched in different police agencies in Chilón and Ocosingo and also presented a protective order for their disappearance.”

One of the detainees is the brother of Juan Carlos Gómez Silvano, the representative of his community, who was murdered on March 21 “with more than 20 gunshots, carried out by a group of people that acted with impunity.” Weeks after the murder, “compañeros from the community detained two of the aggressors and delivered them to the ministerial authorities. Now, those two individuals are found under criminal process in El Amate (prison). Their names are Sebastián Méndez Hernández (Chilón municipal police agent at the time of the murder) and Jerónimo Hernández Gómez.”

The ejido owners, adherents to the Sixth, “have a well-founded fear that this aggression is in reprisal for the detention of the municipal police agent Méndez Hernández, who participated in the assassination of our compañero.” One day before, the Indigenous had carried out an occupation and intermittent roadblock at the Agua Azul crossroad, in defense of their territory.